Good post OP.
Why do I play.... There were a few seasons where the competitions was so fierce that I couldn't believe how fun it was to be involved in such races. And in CL and Cup, I went into the semifinals almost all the time, and losing into the final game so many times in both competitions.... aaaargh ;p But I also won them a few times, which were always awesome feelings.
However, I'm not a fan of the fact that players lose so much their capability of improvement at an early age, like 24-25 y.o I believe. I'm not like many of you with infinite number of green packs and I don't have the time to train my players that much so I need to refresh my team too often. I would like to keep my players longer. And I don't like the new TM for the same reasons players already listed in this thread.
And the Cup draw.... I spent a lot of times last season to build an interesting team for this season, and I'm rewarded by playing against teams one level higher than me. Make all this preparation a bit pointless.